New Mars Forums

If you can't stop a plane with overflight rights how in the world do you plan to stop a rocket?

Thing is the rocket attack could only be used once and then the U.S. would go beserk and ban all the space flight it could, everywhere.

Think of a non-American X Prizer selling rocket systems to all the governments in Africa for dirt cheap as a way to kick start their leap into space.

I think it could lead to global-government really fast actually. Either the U.S. has to own everybody, or allow the U.N. to.

Global borders just go all to phooey.

You don't even have to make full orbital. Take of in Mexico heading for "Canada" and make a quick stop in Washington...

Basically I don't think countries want to play MAD with nutter trigger happy Presidents. Terrorists want to invoke terror, not just kill people. Rockets are not their style and are a lot harder to hide than a few pounds of C4 in a bag on a bus.

Although Bruce Simpson in New Zealand proved you could build a rudimentary cruise missle (supersonic, ground hugging) for only $5000.

Someone would have to show significant benefit to a terrorist to go to all the effort to build a raft of ICBMs (to beat SDI).
Cuz that is hard and expensive and really hot potato.

However it might be the only way to deliver a decent nuke (if you aquired a nuke you will have no trouble building ICBMS).

You would have to have a really good aerosol to deploy a Biological. A infected suicide could cross the border far more easily.

If you had a bunch of nerve gas... your missle would have to be really really accurate.

It would have to be a nuke and you would have to really believe you couldn't smuggle it into the country.

Otherwise there is no motivation for anyone to build an offensive capable RLV (or EEELV) other than for profit.

um...

For the first ten years your personal space will be limited to a few domes and a bunch of tunnels.

You won't be building a homestead and riding horse back for miles. Life will really really be quite crappy.

Its for the sort of people who become monks, climb mountains or do deep sea diving.

So said billionaire has to believe in a cause. AND he has to be really bored of being a billionaire.

I would go one way... with untested equipment to. But then I am a nutter.

And if you don't mind only lasting a few years then its cheaper than even mars direct.

No govt would ever pay for it though.

Assuming transport costs are the same, why would you test Mars hardware on the moon? Why would you send something that needs testing of the planet? If you need to rely on it and you can't trust it, the you can't leave leo in it.

If you don't need to rely on it, then why wwaste a whole mission testing it? Take it to mars and if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, hey spare parts!

If it fails on the Moon, how is that different to it failing on Mars? If it fails on the moon then you have taken precatuions to deal with that eventuality. Why not take the same precautions on MARS?!?!?!

If you are testing structures then a pass on the moon means nothing. It means the structure can handle half the gravity that it needs to.

If you REALLY need a true vacuum to test (and double external pressure won't work for some reason) then test the technology in LEO.

Nearly everything can be rated for Mars while still on Earth.

BTW how did we get away form hanging out in the ISS?

Could Artificial gravity be testing in something like a hardcore carnival ride?

What if you built one of them high speed donuts that generate 3g's and engineered it to run continuously for 1-6 months. Put a dood in it and viola... you know how badly their ears freak out.

And you didn't spend 800 million doing it.

at 250 people in a colony what is "a mandate to govern".

The mandate is approved by military and police so that they know who is the legit faction.

At 250 you can still have a a colony wide referendum on every little thing at meal times.

Is the "govenrment" going to collect taxes?

I think you are going to end up with one (elected) dude who settles disputes and worries about external relations (and stopping people firing high speed projectiles) and little else.

Nearly every thing is going to take care of itself or will be resolvable without "legislation".

I think we are highlighting a split in two schools of thought.

I can see going out and around the moon once and back, doing an "Earth direct" as a good way of testing Mars Direct hardware. However how many time will you test the Hardware?

Exploration is not an iterative process. You go as far as you can, as fast as you can. Currently we are doing that with rovers.

Research, is go a bit, come home, learn, go a bit further ... etc.

I am in the school of old style explorers I guess. Nasa is charged with doing research. If I had been in Apollo 10, I would have never made it home... I would probably have died on the surface.

Cost the same to launch as Apollo 11, and 8. Slightly more than eight, adding the cost of the lcm.

It was justifible during the 60's especially when 11 would fly only two months later.

It is a really expensive way of doing things though.

Personally I think it should be run through the U.N.

Now I don't like the U.N. at all, but I think everybody would be more realistic about what to expect. Also it would open a lot of the tech to being public domain, allow a lot wider international support and it would draw funding from the general budget.

But it does need a charter other than "build a generic piece of space hardware".

I would vote, for example, A monster Space Station (think star trek huge), a heavy lift eelv, and an eelv passenger ship (20 peeps) on top of a fully reusable booster. Then begin cycling university students etc from all over the world. That is a concept that could justify 100 Billion dollars being spent on it.

The launch vehicles are not great, but if they aree to be built on PD hardware then they can't be NASA bleeding edge, eh Eric.

I just think something has to be at least slightly visionary to gain universal steam.

If you modified it substantialy then you need to re-estimate where the center of mass is. To have something worth moving it would need at least 100t of additions which brings it all into the 300-400 tonne range. So you would have to hoist a truly massive booster up there. Perhaps the shuttle could lift two 60 tonne pre-fueled engines...

The ISS has or will have a walloping great truss, and a lot of "structure" that lends itself to being tacked on to.

What if the space shuttles all took their last flights one way to the Station!!!! Each with 60 tonnes of supplies or what not after the booters had been attached to the truss.

Next with all the shuttles attached, the whole jallopy could head off to mars... The hulk could be crash landed with the shuttles coming in one at a time after, for the mother of all sequential controlled crashes. If you picked somewhere really flat and rovers left the hulk to set up as radio beacons to guide the shuttles in... that would be ~15+ air locks and huge amounts of pressurisable living areas. Also thats a lot of rockets engines and spares. Like 12 SSME's a bunch of oms's.

Now if those extra boosters had been methane combatible, and one of the had survied then it would be entirley possible to return after say, four years leaving behind a significant installation (especially if ISS modules had been buried by the crew).

Its better than sending the shuttles out for recycling... Or becoming garden sheds in houston...

All the strains would be placed on module interconnects. A much greater super structure would have to be weld on around it.

Skylab was awesome simply because it was so BIG in one piece. Before you went to large modules again we would be a lot better of with a really heavy lift Booster.

With the soyuz, or perhaps six new modules bundled together, they could actually seperate right before attempting to land individually.

The big plus of a conglomerate of independent modules is that if something explode (ala. Apollo 13) or a given unit begins thrusting out of control, then it can be cut loose, or just manhandled by the rest of the craft.

I dunno. Maybe it the body would respond better than it does to wieghtlessness. Under those conditions you go nauseous until your brain switches your sense of balance of entirely (or just ignores it compeletly. It can take days for a returned astronauts brain to start listening to the inner ear again, so for that time period they are a bit of a danger to themselves.

If subjected to corolis perhaps you will feel nauseous when ever you turn you head sharply, but perhaps you brain will eventually filter those sensations as "garbage" because they don't corroborate the other senses.

Because you feel those sensations so little on earth it may take an extended period for your brain to trust those singals from your inner ear.

But could it really be worse than having no sense of balance at all?